easylaw.ai: the free site for Pakistan judgments

easy law.ai is the brainchild of Areeb Siddiqui who has a Masters Degree in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Cambridge. This is Areeb’s first project and great service has been provided to Pakistan because of the fact that the site fills a very large lacuna in knowledge by providing totally free information in a much needed area which will benefit law students, lawyers, judges and lay people alike. For example you can find 264 results for judgments containing the word “Musharraf” and 500 results are returned for “General Zia”.

Video of our Jinnah of Pakistan discussion

An extremely interesting discussion led by historian Dr Muhammad Reza Kazimi on Stanley Wolpert’s book Jinnah of Pakistan was held at The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA). The video is below and the press coverage is available here.

Kashmir: The Way Forward

The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA) organised conference on ‘Kashmir, the Way Forward’ which was held on 29-30 January 2020: see our coverage on Pakistan Horizon Blog here and here. Numerous dignitaries spoke at the event including Dr Masuma Hasan, IA Rahman and former Ambassador and Foreign Secretary of Pakistan Riaz Khokhar. The videos from day one and day two of the Conference are available below.

 

Muhammad Munir: From Jinnah to Zia

Muhammad Munir was the Chief Justice of Pakistan from 29 June 1954 – 2 May 1960. He did not believe in democracy and the rule of law. He believed that Pakistan was best run from the top down by the civil and military bureaucracy. He destroyed democracy in Pakistan by giving a series of poor judgments favouring the Government, the first of these being Maulvi Tamizuddin Khan PLD 1955 FC 240. Later in The State v Dosso PLD 1958 SC 533, Munir set out to develop the manacles of the doctrine of necessity even further by validating and upholding martial law. His book From Jinnah to Zia where he appeared to regret his judgments can be read here.

Video of Chinese scholars’ visit to PIIA

A delegation of scholars from Sichuan University led by Prof. Yan Shijing, Vice President of Sichuan University addressed in a roundtable session held in the library of The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA) on 18 December 2019. The video is available below and the full post is available on Pakistan Horizon Blog. It was said that China strongly supports the position of Pakistan in Kashmir.

Video of Talk by Dr Kaiser Bengali

“Pakistan is facing a major economic crisis for which we need to take urgent steps. But first we need to take our economic sovereignty back,” said economist Dr Kaiser Bengali, while proposing to ban all non-essential consumer imports in order to promote local industry. He was speaking at an interactive session on ‘Contemporary Economic and Security Issues in Pakistan’ at the library of The Pakistan Institute of Inter­national Affairs on 5 December 2019. Earlier, Dr Nausheen Wasi, assistant professor, Department of International Relations, Univer­sity of Karachi, gave a presentation about FATF (see here).

Video: Kashmir: A Nuclear Flashpoint

Addressing a lecture on “Kashmir: a nuclear flashpoint” organised by The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA) in its library, Dr Rabia said the issue of Kashmir later was taken over by what was happening in Syria with the Turks and the Kurds and the Middle-East and then the Trump with his tweets gained all the attention.She said, “We needs to keep the world involved in Kashmir in the same way as the prime minister addressed over the issue in UNGA.” Recalling an interview of General Khalid Kidwai who was the founding Director-General of Strategic Plans Division which was the Secretariat of National Command Authority and served the post for around 16 years, Dr. Rabia Akhtar said General Khalid Kidwai gave four red lines for Pakistan which if crossed can push Pakistan to contemplate the use option of war including special threshold, military threshold, economic threshold and social-political threshold. The full report with photography by Farhan Khan is here.

Video of PIIA Roundtable on Iran with Dr Syed Mohammad Kazem Sajjadpour

On Friday, July 19 2019, Dr. Syed Mohammad Kazem Sajjadpour, President of the famous Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS), visited us at The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA) for a roundtable on Iran’s relationship with the United States and how it is influencing the course of events in the region. He said that in order to understand the question of why Iran is the way it is today, it is important to comprehend three integral factors – the United States’ contradictory policies with Iran, the resulting state of bitterness, and an uneven assessment of the available possibilities. By laying emphasis on the contradictory policies of the United States, during very tense times, Dr. Kazem sought to explain how certain inconsistencies in the harsh policies of the United States have been a significant source of tension between the two countries, especially when pursuing negotiations and settling agreements.

ICJ Judgment in the Jadhav Case

This is the recent ICJ judgment in the important JADHAV CASE (INDIA v. PAKISTAN). The Court found that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, in the matter of the detention and trial of an Indian national/spy, Mr. Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav, has acted in breach of the obligations incumbent on it under Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. THE HAGUE, 17 July 2019. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, today rendered its Judgment in the Jadhav case (India v. Pakistan). In its Judgment, which is final, binding and without appeal, the Court,

(1) finds, unanimously, that it has jurisdiction, on the basis of Article I of the Optional Protocol concerning the Compulsory Settlement of Disputes to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 24 April 1963, to entertain the Application filed by the Republic of India on 8 May 2017;

(2) rejects, by fifteen votes to one, the objections by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to the admissibility of the Application of the Republic of India and finds that the Application of the Republic of India is admissible;

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(3) finds, by fifteen votes to one, that, by not informing Mr. Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav without delay of his rights under Article 36, paragraph 1 (b), of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan breached the obligations incumbent upon it under that provision;

(4) finds, by fifteen votes to one, that, by not notifying the appropriate consular post of the Republic of India in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan without delay of the detention of Mr. Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav and thereby depriving the Republic of India of the right to render the assistance provided for by the Vienna Convention to the individual concerned, the IslamicRepublic of Pakistan breached the obligations incumbent upon it under Article36, paragraph 1 (b), of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations;

(5) finds, by fifteen votes to one, that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan deprived the Republic of India of the right to communicate with and have access to Mr. Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav, to visit him in detention and to arrange for his legal representation, and thereby breached the obligations incumbent upon it under Article 36, paragraph 1 (a) and (c), of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations;

Pakistan welcomes OHCHR report on Kashmir

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights recently provided an Update of the Situation of Human Rights in Indian-Administered Kashmir and Pakistan-Administered Kashmir from May 2018 to April 2019. The report is based on information collected by OHCHR through monitoring the situation in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (consisting of the Kashmir Valley, the Jammu and Ladakh regions) and Pakistan-Administered Kashmir (Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan). It is issued pursuant to the mandate of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, as provided by United Nations General Assembly resolution 48/141.

The report of the OHCHR was seen by India as “false and motivated narrative” that ignored “the core issue of cross-border terrorism.”

Pakistan welcomed the report. However, Pakistan requested that sections be removed or amended in which the information was “not specific to Pakistan-Administered Kashmir but were general human rights concerns affecting all of Pakistan.”

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